What's an unemployed writer to do? Read a lot. Write a lot.
Fortunately for the modern-day unemployed writer, we now have the Internet, which allows us to share the intimate and embarrassing details of our quest for self-sufficiency.
Of course all the books I review here are available from my Amazon store. I'll try not to recommend anything too out-of-print to you all.
So pour yourself a cup of coffee, grab something warm and sugary to munch, and curl up on the couch with me. This is going to be awesome.

04/15/2010

Max is fond of reminding me that novels generally ought to open with a glimpse -- however brief -- of the status quo. If we, the readers, are going to follow these characters for 200+ pages, and feel a sense of closure at the end of whatever journey they were on, we have to know where they started. This is just how we think about narrative. If I told you "Hey, I walked all the way to the Safeway in Albequerque!" you wouldn't think that was impressive unless you already knew I live in Los Angeles.

Patricia Highsmith definitely starts this book out on a status quo note -- though not the status quo of her main character, Therese Belivet. And this is, of course, the point.

We first meet Therese during the lunch hour at Frankenberg's Department Store, where she's an employee for the Christmas rush season. She's all alone, sitting at one of the long linoleum tables, reading the "Welcome to Frankenberg's" guide over and over again because she just has nothing better to do. She's miserable, lonesome, and in a bad relationship. Welcome to women's fiction in the 50s! We are all disaffected!

And this is where The Price of Salt gets a little bit different. Therese is not, say, Esther Greenwood. She is not at all deceived by her surroundings. She knows exactly how horrible it is to be a woman in 1950s America, and she wishes so desperately that she could escape. For Therese, the status quo is trying to escape. Therese is perpetually, continually trying to run away.

So, what's she running from? Nearly everything, it seems. She's an aspiring theatre set designer (spoiler alert, but it's not that big of a spoiler) who's been out of work for a while now. So she wants to run away from the disappointments of her failed career to something more mindless, like Frankenberg's. But Frankenberg's feels like a prison, and she can't stop seeing the world through the eyes of a set designer. ("What kind of set would one make for a play that took place in a department store? She was back again.") She can't bear to be alone, so she is dating Richard. But she can't bear to be with Richard, so she is continually pushing him away, finding excuses not to see him, doing her best to avoid seeing him while still holding the idea of him in her head as a safeguard against the solitary fate of Mrs. Robichek. She knows what she's running from. She just has no idea what to run to!

And here we have the main problem of the story presenting itself. It doesn't quite fall into the typical Feminine Mystique narrative (as I described it last time). Therese is smart, and she knows how unhappy she is. She also knows enough to know that she needs to find a solution to her problem. But she is only 19, and casting about gamely is pretty much the best solution she's come up with.

On the other end of the spectrum, of course, is Mrs. Robichek, who is thankfully (for the sake of all our mental health) a minor character. Seriously, the entire sequence is one of the most heartwrenching I've ever read, and I feel a literal ache in my stomach reading about her efforts to get into bed. Mrs. Robichek is the pathetic and lonely aging person that everyone has known at one point or another. She's a Mrs., which means that there was a Mr. at one point or another, but there's no sign of him (or, incidentally, of any children) and no hint of where he's gone. She used to own her own business, but had to give it up when her vision started to deteriorate.

Like I said, everyone knows that truly pitiable old person. When I was growing up, it was literally every one of my neighbors. We lived in one of those neighborhoods built during the Baby Boom to house the young soldiers returning from Europe, and most of the houses were still occupied by the original buyers. (That's completely different now, of course.) And no matter how awesome they are, and how much you like hanging out with them -- which is, in my experience, quite a lot, especially when they have pianos and extensive mystery fiction libraries -- there will be a moment in your life when you think to yourself, "Holy shit, if I don't get my life together I am going to end up alone and tragic."

Max and I have been reading it aloud together, and when we got to the end of the chapter he was just kind of quiet for a while, and then said "Holy shit that was depressing." I convinced him that it does get better, but he's still dubious.

And on that incredibly cheerful note...I swear, you guys, the book gets better. And ends happily! If you're doubtful, just read Patricia Highsmith's postscript. Full of it-ends-happily testimonials.

Hello there, Internet! First off I would like to say welcome to the Jezzies, and to my Facebook friends. Here is what happened to me this week!

SUNDAY: I decide to read The Price of Salt. This is the best idea I've ever had! And I'm a genius. I write a little thingy to get everybody excited, and sure enough everyone shows up being excited. I decide to start on Wednesday, because this gives everybody the perfect amount of time to buy the book at Borders. (I recommend Borders above Barnes and Noble, just because. I don't know why. Irrational prejudice I guess.)

MONDAY/TUESDAY: It's Passover! Nothing to do on the Internet today, that's for dang sure.

WEDNESDAY: I am not feeling so great. But that's okay. I sleep a little too long, bake a couple loaves of bread because Passover is finished and therefore I can leaven as much flour as I want, bitches. I start writing a post but can't finish because I start getting a migraine. That's okay, I can post later, it will not be a vicious cycle.

THURSDAY: My tutoring appointment doesn't show up but that's okay. I go to a cafe and sit down with The Price of Salt and begin composing a lyrical and wonderful meditation on robots as a metaphor for femininity. It was more complicated and lyrical than that; that's just the short-hand version. Or maybe it was a flu symptom! Read on.

After about half an hour of this, I begin to feel headachey. I call Max to please come meet me at the cafe and work by my side, since clearly the #1 cause of headaches in America is Being Lonely. So he gamely shows up and we work for a little while. Then he asks if I want to walk to the store or something. I say "NO!!" It is disproportionately vehement. He sadly asks if I'm angry at him. I just say no, I'm in pain, I want to go home. I spend the rest of the day sort of wandering around vaguely, trying to do things and failing. My day culminates with burning the chicken I was making for dinner and then failing to watch a movie on Hulu because I am just too grumpy to use a Search function correctly.

FRIDAY: I wake up completely 100% dead. And in pain. And there are some gross bodily functions going on that I won't share.

"Well," I think to myself, "I wish I'd known that I had the flu earlier. I would have gotten the being sick part out of the way yesterday."

But I didn't know. And so I spend the next couple days being just utterly miserable. Luckily they are Shabbat and The Weekend (which is Sunday) respectively, so I'm okay. Equally luckily, we have a box of leftover matzo on top of the fridge. This is all I can eat. Once I try to upgrade to matzo with butter, which sounded delicious for some reason. It is a bad idea. I also try to eat some lasagna which Max buys for himself. Worse idea! But eventually, I am able to consume foods again. I celebrate tentatively, with a piece of cheese, an apple, and some bread that I baked several days ago. The bread is pretty gross by this time.

MONDAY-WEDNESDAY: I catch up on everything I didn't do while I was being ill.

WAY TOO LATE ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT: It is a week after I meant to start this blog! I feel like a miserable failure. :( But I'm back on track, and we are going to read the shit out of Patricia Highsmith's sophomore novel, if you know what I mean.

If you don't have the book, your library is incomplete. Buy it now!

Also, if you're using something which is not Firefox (this apparently has problems with Amazon widgets), such as Internet Explorer, you will see a little widget on the side of the blog with about 10 book covers that rotate in it. This is a sneak peek of some of the books I hope to read here! Get excited and say hooray! But of course, I'm always willing to take suggestions. I love to have books suggested to me. The one book I will not read is Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel, because of this review. But suggest anything else and I'll seriously consider it.

Our first book is definitely not a new one, but it's a good one nonetheless: The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith (of Tom Ripley fame). Here's a brief intro; we'll begin reading and blogging the book on Wednesday (Monday and Tuesday are holidays for me, so I'm afraid we can't begin sooner -- but I'll have plenty to write about by then!)

It's difficult to classify The Price of Salt among Highsmith's other writings. If you're already a fan of the Ripley series, or any of her other thrillers such as Strangers on a Train, you're in for a surprise. The Price of Salt certainly has its share of excitement and intrigue, but at its heart it is an intimate story of love between two women, and their gradual separation from the expectations and demands of the men in their lives.

The novel takes place just over 10 years before Betty Friedan and Germaine Greer appeared on the scene to shake the American woman out of her mystique-induced torpor. The two main characters -- Therese and Carol -- are certainly trapped within the norms and expectations of society. Carol is slowly working her way out of a loveless marriage, while Therese is on her way into one -- straining against an engagement to a man who holds no sexual fascination for her. All in all, Highsmith sets us up for a fairly typical, depressing 1950s housewife narrative of discontent and stagnation. However, the twist which she adds is, in true Highsmith fashion, both entirely unexpected and entirely natural.

And no, I'm not going to tell you what it is.

It's fairly common for women's novels (particularly women's novels written before 1980, when the Third Wave started to break) to use illicit lesbian desire as a metaphor for the social independence of women from men. Think Fried Green Tomatoes, or most of the writings of the Bloomsbury group. (Don't look at me like that, Virginia Woolf wrote the chastest lesbian love affairs of all time.) Highsmith doesn't shy away from the inherent sensuality of her subject, however. Therese and Carol are in bed, and often. The sex is explicit (for a 1952 mass market book) and constant. So in a very real sense, this is a romance novel -- one of the first mainstream lesbian romances. Highsmith was not herself a lesbian, but she treats the subject very seriously and respectfully. She pulls no punches -- there is no titillation, no voyeurism. The book would read very much the same if the affair were heterosexual. Under Highsmith's writerly gaze, all romantic love is fairly equivalent, which is what makes this book such an incredible experience.

I read this book quite a long time ago, and was completely gripped by it. I'm looking forward to falling under its spell again -- please come join me!

04/03/2010

My name is Kate, and I'm a compulsive writer. I write all day, every day, all over everything -- I label things in my cupboard, I make little sticky-notes and put them on my bulletin board, I write work-for-hire things because I do still have to eat, and when I'm feeling particularly ambitious (or bored), I write fiction.

No, that's not entirely true. Actually the majority of my output is fiction. Some of it has even been published, and believe me, when that happens again you will be the first to know.

Anyway, back to the main story here... When I'm not writing, my next favorite thing to do is read. Talking about what I'm reading is a close third. And just the other night I was having a conversation with a friend, begging her to let me know whether or not a book I'd been wanting to read was particularly good, when it dawned on me: I could set up a website to do just that. Not terribly formal -- just letting you know when a book is good, and what's so good about it.

So, here's the format of the blog. I'll read compulsively, and update here several times per book -- every few chapters or so, just so you know what the outline of the book looks like. There won't be any spoilers though! And if the book sounds good, there will be a link to Amazon here, where you can buy it for yourself, and a little bit of that money will come to me through my Amazon shop. If you don't like it, then don't buy it!

That said, here's my first recommendation! Something to prepare you for days ahead. This little book has been making the rounds for a while, but it's never stopped being completely awesome.

Read, Remember, Recommend is based on a pretty brilliant concept (obvious, but brilliant in its obviousness): people who are avid readers are always on the lookout for new books to read. So, the author, Rachelle Rogers Knight, decided to combine a recommended reading list with a book journal. The front half of the journal is dedicated to lists -- namely, lists of all the major award winners of the past 60 years or so. She lists all the major literary prizes, in all the genres, from all the countries who award them. Then in the back half of the book, there's a traditional-style book journal, with spaces for title, author, date you started, who recommended it, and comments, among others.

All in all, in terms of writing journals this is the best one for a beginner. It's intuitive, and ridiculously helpful to boot, and you'll never be at a loss for what to read next (you know, if your friends are being unusually unhelpful recommendation-wise). The downside to it, I suppose, would be that so far it doesn't really reward repurchasing -- though I suppose Ms. Knight might fix that in new editions. But till then, who needs multiple copies of the list of Pulitzer winners? So after you fill this journal, you can replace it with virtually any other reading journal around. But if you're a first-time reading journaler, then I'd definitely recommend this one for you!